


Threads Unbreakable

by sixxon



Series: Soulmate AU One-Shots [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Red String of Fate, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, Suicide mention, artist akaashi, rape mention, russian translation link in end notes, string cups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6453850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixxon/pseuds/sixxon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had tried everything. Cutting it, burning it, untying it, taking it off of his finger, pulling it, everything. Nothing had worked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads Unbreakable

He had tried everything. Cutting it, burning it, untying it, taking it off of his finger, pulling it, everything. Nothing had worked.

Akaashi looked down at the bright scarlet thread that wound itself around his left ring finger. It looked no less perfect than it always had. Completely untarnished, no burn marks, no fraying threads. In honesty, even though it felt just like sting, it was like it was a wire made from diamonds in its resiliency.

It wasn’t that Akaashi abhorred the idea of having a soul mate, he found it romantic actually. But he’d seen how even soul mates can be torn apart, his parents were first hand experience. His mother had cheated on his father, and as a result, the universe decided to kill his mom. Akaashi had heard myths about how if you betray your string you’d die, and even if his mother was proof of that theory, he didn’t believe it, after all, she did commit suicide.

Akaashi didn’t want his life to revolve around that sting and whatever, whoever, lied on the other end of it. He just wanted to draw and live a calm life of doing commissions for other people. He was thankful, in at least one respect to his string, that he was right handed and didn’t need to worry so much about when the person on the other end yanked a little too hard, which was often.

Despite not wanting his string, Akaashi thought often about what kind of person was tied to him. He figured that the other person must be lively, considering how many times Akaashi had been pulled all sorts of ways by that stupid thread. One time, Akaashi tried to put a cup on the string to try communicating with the other person, but that was a fruitless endeavor since, well, how could he know if the other person had the same idea? Not to mention having it at the same time.

Still, he had spoken a few words into the cup before he gave up.

“Who are you?” He had asked.

There was no reply.

Akaashi, after figuring out that no one else could see the cup once he’d attached it to the string, to keep the cup there out of sheer curiosity. When he showered or worked, he slid the cup down more so it wouldn’t get in his way. The cup had been there for two years, he had changed it every now and then if it got too dirty, but so far he had heard nothing from the other end.

Today however, he was in the shower and particularly strong yank pulled him face fist into the wall.

-~- 

Bokuto had yet to find the person on the other end of his string, though he was still searching. He had tried pulling on the string, but there had been no pulls back in response, no matter how often he tried. Sometimes the string would wobble, but after some investigation, he figured this must be when the person on the other end was showering or something similar. Today, when he had noticed the wobbling he had decided to yank the string as hard as he could. This time, a minute or two later, he was met with a response, a yank equally as hard, if not harder than his own, sent Bokuto crashing to the ground in the middle of volleyball practice.

Despite the painful sting at the bridge of his nose, Bokuto was ecstatic, this was the first response he had ever received in his twenty years of life, even if it was a _negative_ response.

Konoha, his teammate, came running to his side and asked if he was okay because it looked like that fall hurt.

“I’m perfect!” Bokuto nearly screeched.

Konoha looked at him skeptically, “most people wouldn’t say that with a bloody nose…”

Bokuto held up his left hand, “they pulled back!” he grinned wildly, his nose bleed dripping onto his now exposed teeth.

“Really? I thought they never responded, so why yank so hard now?” Konoha asked, handing Bokuto a tissue pack the manager had just given to him.

Bokuto pulled out a tissue and stuck it up the bleeding nostril, “maybe when I pulled they fell or something?”

“Uh, that’s not really a good thing, Bokuto.”

Bokuto’s eyes widened in realization, “oh my god!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet, “what if they hate me?!”

Konoha immediately pulled Bokuto the the bench and sat him down, “calm down, you’ll only make yourself bleed more,” he sighed.

“How am I supposed to apologize to someone I don’t know?” Bokuto cried to his friend.

Kuroo, who had walked over to the bench to check on Bokuto caught the tail end of the conversation, “oh, your soul mate?” he asked.

Bokuto nodded.

“Do you have an idea? All he can really do is pull on the string, but… he doesn’t know Morse Code, and that would also be…” Konoha cringed, trailing off.

“Have you tried using it like a string phone?” Kuroo asked.

Bokuto looked up at his best friend like he had opened up the secrets of the universe to him, his eyes shined with a newfound respect for Kuroo.

“Bro! Thank you!” he shouted, pulling Kuroo’s arm to hug it in gratitude.

Kuroo laughed, “don’t thank me yet, besides, the person on the other end might not have thought of that either.”

-~- 

Akaashi sat at his laptop, searching desperately for more reference photos on Google images to add to his folder, he could never have too many, after all. Poses he liked were hard to find since he preferred to have real people posing, this led to him looking up more modelling photos or action photos from sports than _actual_ reference photos. Even though he was only in his first year of university, he already had many commission offers in his back pocket. Currently another local University, Fukuma, had asked him to draw caricatures the captains and vice-captains of their many sports teams, namely the basketball, baseball, and volleyball teams, which he was provided team photos, with the people to be drawn circled, for.

Just as he was picking out the colours for the artwork, he heard a voice.

“Uh, uh, I don’t know what to say,” it was quiet, and then louder, the voice shouted, “hello?!”

Akaashi jumped back in his seat and looked down at the cup on his string that had been waiting patiently for two years.

“Ah, I guess that you don’t have a cup on your end then…” the voice said after a minute of Akaashi’s breathless silence, dejected.

So this was his soul mate?

“ah,” he said loud enough that it could be picked up, “I do.”

“Really!?” the man screeched.

Akaashi flinched, “…yes.”

“Oh!” he said and some rustling came through the cup, “I wanted to apologize for yanking on the thread…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Akaashi responded, even though his forehead still hurt from earlier that morning.

“Um,” the man said tentatively, “could I maybe… ask your name? We are… soul mates… after all…” the way the man said _soul mates_ was quieter than the rest of his statement.

“My initials are A.K,” Akaashi said, “I don’t intend on living with my soul mate, thus why I never respond when you pull,” he stated.

Akaashi felt bad about saying it, especially since the man seemed very excited to be able to communicate with him, but even if it hurt, it wouldn’t hurt as bad as if they did get together and one of them died or betrayed the other. That was how Akaashi rationalized it.

“Oh,” the man said quietly, “well, could we at least be string phone buddies?”

Akaashi stifled a snicker, what a ridiculous thing to call your soul mate, “sure,” he said calmly.

“My name is Bokuto Koutaro,” the other man said, “ah! But if you’d rather stay impersonal then call me…uh,” Bokuto paused thinking of a name, “Beefmaster!”

Akaashi laughed then, “I’ll pass, thank you though.”

“Aw,” Bokuto sighed, “I thought Beefmaster was a cool name…”

-~- 

Their conversation lasted for another hour after that, talking of nothing in particular. Bokuto did most of the talking since his soul mate refused to divulge any information besides things such as favourite food or colour.

Bokuto was distressed, reasonably so. His soul mate, the person who he was supposed to cherish for the rest of his life and vice versa, barely wanted anything to do with him. At least A.K had explained to him that he felt bad about ruining his expectations about the person on the other end on the thread.

“So… he doesn’t want a soul mate?” Kuroo asked, mixing a third creamer into his coffee.

Bokuto banged his head down on the table, “he said he doesn’t want to be tied down,”

“So he doesn’t want a soul mate,” Bokuto’s friend repeated in a more final tone.

Bokuto raised his head and pouted at Kuroo, “he wouldn’t even tell me his name.”

Kuroo took a sip of his coffee, “what did he tell you?”

“Well, he likes owls, particularly barn owls,” Bokuto started, “his favourite colour is gold, though he doesn’t like to wear it, his favourite food is Nanohana no Karashiae,”

“Gross,” Kuroo said, cutting him off.

Bokuto gave his friend a look, “that’s what I said.”

“What else?”

“He’s an artist,” Bokuto grinned, “do you think he’d be able to draw me if I asked?”

“Not for free, probably,” Kuroo snickered, “besides, how would he get it to you without revealing himself?”

Bokuto sat up and put his hand on his chin, “what if I promise not to bother him?”

Kuroo gave Bokuto a judgemental look and clicked his tongue, “that would be a bald-faced lie.”

Bokuto groaned putting his head back on the table.

-~- 

A few weeks had passed since Akaashi had first “met” his soul mate, or rather, his string-phone buddy, as Bokuto had put it. He had found out Bokuto was the vice-captain for the University volleyball team he was supposed to draw. Bokuto had some of the most ridiculous hair Akaashi had ever seen, but somehow it complimented the mans wild grin, proud posture, and fierce, heavy set, golden eyes. He was pretty handsome, at least, Akaashi thought so anyways.

Akaashi felt a little bad that he knew who Bokuto was and Bokuto didn’t know who he was, other than some initials and a disembodied voice from a cup. A few times, Akaashi had felt like he wanted to come out to Bokuto, but he always shut the idea down.

Lately, Akaashi had been getting that idea more often, especially since Bokuto was such an accepting person, despite how loud and rambunctious he was. Akaashi hadn’t tried to cut his thread since meeting Bokuto, and not because he knew it was impossible, but because he was, begrudgingly, becoming attracted to this boy with grown-out, spiked up, silver hair.

Every now and again Akaashi caught himself daydreaming about Bokuto in class. How tall was he? Taller than Akaashi? He hoped so. Akaashi caught himself looking at the soul mates in his classes, how happy they looked, even when they disagreed or fought. Akaashi had even called his father, something he seldom did.

“You want to know about your mom?”

Akaashi nodded into the phone, “please.”

His dad laughed sadly, “well, she didn’t cheat on me, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“What?”

“We were soul mates after all. You were too young to understand when it happened, so I never did explain it to you properly,” Akaashi noticed his father sounded a little sad. “Keiji, your mother she…” his father gulped, “she was raped,” he choked out, “and she got… pregnant, and so—”

Akaashi cut him off, nearing tears “it’s okay, dad, I get it, you don’t need to explain it anymore.”

The two men cried on the phone together. Akaashi admitted that his mother had told him she cheated, because that’s what she thought, because she had blamed herself, and they both cried more. Akaashi was glad he called his dad and asked.

Right after Akaashi said, “I love you, dad,” his father spoke up.

“Keiji,” he started, stopping Akaashi from ending the call, “if you’ve found your soul mate, please don’t shun them. I’m sure they love you just as much as your mom loved you and as much as I love you.”

After the call was ended, Akaashi cried more and more, and in the following days he visited his mothers grave, and visited his father.

-~- 

Bokuto picked up the school paper on Tuesday, he’d heard that there was an article on the volleyball team, as well as some other teams, and the school had hired someone to draw the captains and vice-captains of each sports team at the University. There, on the first page of the sports section, was a drawn photo of him and Kuroo, the two of them grinning and giving a peace sign at the viewer. Down below the drawing, was a name, the artists name.

            _Akaashi. K._

Bokuto’s heart pounded in his chest, _was this him?_

_-~-_

Akaashi was certain Bokuto must have seen the artwork he’d done for his schools’ paper; it had been a week since it was published after all. However, Bokuto had yet to bring it up in any of their late night, early morning, conversations, and those were hours long. Maybe Bokuto hadn’t seen his name below the picture, that was a possibility. Or, maybe Bokuto had been respecting his wish to stay impersonal with his soul mate, a wish that was now out-of-date.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi said, cutting off Bokuto’s rant about his friend Kuroo.

Bokuto hummed, “yeah?”

Akaashi sucked in a breath, “my name is Akaashi Keiji,” he said softly.

-~- 

Bokuto’s breath hitched, he had never heard a more beautiful sound in his life.

Akaashi’s voice, soft and angelic as it was, rang clear through the cup, “my name is Akaashi Keiji,”

Grinning wildly, Bokuto put his mouth to the cup, he was sure Akaashi was waiting for a response, “I know,” he said.

“Y-you know?”

Bokuto laughed, “I saw your name in my school paper, I… I wanted you to tell me though.”

“Would you wait for me?” Akaashi asked suddenly.

Bokuto’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as his face grew a warm red colour, “where?”

“Your University, the front entrance. Don’t forget to remove the cup.”

-~- 

Akaashi sat outside the front doors to Fukuma University, his ears turned red from the chill of the night. He checked his phone, it was three twenty-seven in the morning. Akaashi was glad he lived so close to Fukuma now, even if it wasn’t his school.

He looked down at the seemingly untouched thread around his ring finger, its red stood stark against the navy of the night and in the pale blue light of the moon. The string wobbled and Akaashi knew that Bokuto was running as the thread bobbed frantically. Suddenly, the movement stopped and Akaashi looked up.

There, standing in the poorly lit night on the pavement in front of him, stood his soul mate. Bokuto panted, his hair was down and flung wildly around his head, as if he had just woken up. His cheeks were red and his mouth was open as Akaashi stared up at him, jaw slacked just like Bokuto’s.

Between Bokuto’s panting, he spoke, “you’re beautiful.”

Akaashi turned bright red, thankful for the cover the combination his scarf and the night gave him. He mouthed a small, breathless, thank you.

Bokuto grabbed Akaashi’s left hand with his own as he used his right one to gently caress the now incredibly short red string between them. Akaashi shivered, and Bokuto must have noticed because he quickly pulled Akaashi up from the bench and into a hug, their left hands still clasped and Bokuto’s right snaked around his waist tightly.

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi said breathlessly; Bokuto was taller, just as he’d thought.

Bokuto squeezed him tighter, letting go of Akaashi’s hand to do this, “Akaashi,” he breathed into the boys’ hair.

Akaashi pulled back a little, not enough to make Bokuto let go, but enough so that he could stare into Bokuto’s golden eyes with his dark green ones.

“I love you,” he whispered with the blowing wind around them.

In the silence, leaves skittered by and the trees brushed their branches together in ambient noise.

Before saying anything else, Bokuto placed his hand onto the side of Akaashi’s face as tears rolled down his own, “I love you,” he whispered back, almost as if he were whispering to the universe.

Without any more words to whisper into the space between them, Bokuto leaned down closer to Akaashi with a soft smile, mouthing another silent promise of love before pressing his lips onto Akaashi’s.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my little precursor treat for BokuAka week, which starts tomorrow. I'll be writing more soulmate AU fics and putting them all in a series together. I thought I would start off with a classic "Red String" fic, because why not, right?
> 
> UPDATE: This story is now translated into Russian by Arisa_Ridder! I feel honoured ! Here's the link:
> 
> https://ficbook.net/readfic/4480779


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